Plot
In Manhattan, cockroaches are spreading a deadly disease that is claiming hundreds of the city's children. Entomologist Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) uses genetic engineering to create what she and her colleague (and husband) Peter Mann (Jeremy Northam) call the Judas Breed, a large insect (looking like a cross between a termite and a praying mantis) that releases an enzyme that kills off the disease-carrying roaches by speeding up their metabolism. The Judas Breed work spectacularly and the crisis is abated. Since the Judas Breed have also been designed to only produce one male able to breed, and they keep it in their care, the hybrid species should die out in a matter of months.
Three years later, people begin to go missing in the subways and tunnels under the city. Susan, Peter, and their staff learn that they severely underestimated the Judas Breed's ability to adapt to its conditions. The Judas Breed has found a way to reproduce and has evolved in order to better hunt a new food source. To everyone's horror, they discover that the Judas' new food source is humans, and now the insects have grown to be as big as people and can mimic the appearance and behavior of humans with uncanny accuracy. Susan and Peter have learned that huge swarms of the Judas Breed are living beneath the city in the subway system, and with the help of Leonard (Charles S. Dutton), a transit system police officer, they search out the insects, whose quick evolution (one fertile male and hordes of females) also made them humanoid, before they can take over the city and from there the world. The film ends when Peter stumbles into a boiler room to get away from the creatures by using himself as bait. He discovers that he has found the nest. He decides to blow up the lair with a lighter, but drops it into a puddle. He grabs a crowbar and slams it into a metal grate, causing a massive explosion that throws him into the puddle. The male Judas survives, but gets run over by a train while chasing Susan. Dr Gates, Susan's colleague, arrives to tell her that Peter did not survive. Moments later, Peter walks out of the subway, safe and sound, and begins to hug Susan.
Read more about this topic: Mimic (film)
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I want to make
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—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)